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1. Question 1 – How did you use media technologies in the construction &
research, planning & evaluation stages?
Research
In each stage of this coursework I relied heavily on media technologies. For the research
stage of the project I had to use a lot of media technologies to source and gather the
appropriate information. This included the online survey website Survey Monkey. We used
Survey Monkey to gather quantitative and qualitative feedback from our target audience on
what features they would like to see in our final music video and
which forms and conversions they prefer to see in a music video.
In our survey we included different forms of response such as
multiple choice, ranking points by relevance and text boxes
where they could write their own responses. This provided us
with information that could easily be collated and used in our
planning stage to create a product that would be best received
by the audience.
Another type of media technology that we used in our research and planning phase was the
internet, more specifically YouTube and Google Images. These two sources allowed us to
research and learn about the styles, themes and conventions that are often found in
Bastilles music videos, covers & Digipack’s and their own styles. This allowed us in the
planning stage to create a more authentic and accurate Bastille video that reflected their
current conventions and styles. By doing so we created a video that contained all the
necessary features that are included in a Bastille music video such as: costumes styles,
camera work, common narrative themes and pacing. The analysis
of multiple videos help us greatly in the planning stage as it
allowed to identify all of the features previously mentioned and
helped us to build a narrative which could contain all of these to
produce the most authentic and accurate video possible that
represented the views of the band.
As well as Survey Monkey we also performed a focus group for gathering more detailed
qualitative feedback. In this focus group we asked 3 people from our target market
questions about what they prefer to see in music videos. These included: which do you
prefer, more live footage or narrative based videos and how important is it to you that the
video is focused on the artists. This resulted in valuable information for the planning stage
as it helped us to take what they wanted and what is commonly found in Bastilles videos to
create what should be a video they will enjoy. These results were presented in a video form
so this had to be recorded in a studio and then later edited which all involved lots of use of
media technologies.

2. Planning
In the planning stage media technology was not needed as much as we were using the
information that we gathered in the research stage and were just discussing and making
decisions on what we were going to do for our final video from that. However, some media
technology was necessary for this stage as we needed to share our ideas and research with
each other. To do this we used file sharing cloud based services such as Google Drive for
large video files and we also used a Facebook group chat to discuss ideas and share small
text based files and images with each other. The group chat was an
essential part of this process as it allowed us to easily communicate
with each other about the work whenever we wanted too. It was
also an essential tool for collaboration as it kept a log of the
discussion so when we can to working on it together we could look
back in the chat and see the decisions that were previously made.
For the pitch in our planning section we used Prezi (online presentation software) as this
provided variety in the way in which we displayed our work. This gave our work a different
style and is much more high quality then a PowerPoint Presentation
as it has much more complex animations and transitions. However,
this did provide some issues as all the Prezi Presentations are stored
on the cloud so instead of uploading the presentations to my
WordPress blog I had to embed them into the post but due to
WordPress requiring a WordPress short code and Prezi not
supporting them we had to use a work around. To do this we used a
3rd party website.
As part of the planning stage we had to create a story board. To do this we hand drawn the
artwork on storyboard sheets. To enhance the quality of these and to add accurate colour to
them we scanned them into the computer using a copier and then edited them in
Photoshop. In Photoshop, we used the selection and fill tools to select each individual item
in the image and then using the colour picker and fill tools to
colour them in. This made them look much more high quality and
made them much more compatible with the digital format in
which our work must be submitted. If we scanned them in after
colouring it would not be as clear. We also selected pastel colours
to use when colouring the drawings as this gave them a more
realistic look.

3. Construction
In the construction stage of the production of our music
video we relied on and used media technology heavily. For
this stage, we had to go out on set multiple times too shoot
the necessary video footage and images to go in our video
and Digipack. To do this we used a Cannon 600D DSLR
camera. We had previously used these cameras in our
research for this project in our video focus group. Therefore,
we had a basic understand of the camera its self which was
helpful as we did not need to work it out. We also needed to
decide which type of mount/stand would be the most useful
for each shot (limited to what was available at our college).
We chose to use the shoulder mount and tripod for our main
camera support as this provided stability to the shots and
allowed us to easily filmin different locations and styles. We
had a lot of running shots in our video which I would have liked
to have used a Gimble camera mount for this as it would have
allowed for smoother video due to the counteracting motion.
However, in the final video I think that by using the shoulder
mount it added additional character to the video as the
movement of the camera added to the frantic nature of the
video. For all static tracking shots or still images we used the
tripod as this allowed us to keep the camera completely
motionless while being able to set it to the required height and
angle while still tracking the action.
After we shot the video we then had to edit it in post-
production. For editing our video, we used Adobe Premier Pro
which allowed us to harness the powerful tools contained
within it to create the highest possible quality video. When
editing our video, we had to first transfer our video off the SD
card contained in the camera and onto the Media Studies drive
on the college server where we could easily store the large
video files and edit off there. Once transferred we could import
our clips into the project library window and then into the time line. Here we could lay this
over the music, cut any unnecessary video out and place the footage in the correct
positions. After that we worked on syncing the cuts of the video with the beat of the music
so that none of the transitions were jarring. We did this by cutting or adding footage,
applying transitions or effects and using time remapping and scaling to fill any empty space
by slightly slowing down footage. This made the structure of the video good but we still
needed to work on the actual footage itself. As it was not shot in a studio with perfect

4. lighting and a perfect camera we needed to apply colouring and other effects to the video to
make the video brighter and higher quality but also more even so there was continuity
within the shots. This was essential for the video to
look consistent as we shot over many different
days with different weather and lighting
conditions. If we did not use these effects it would
have been obvious and the narrative of the video
would have been broken. On most clips, I added a
+5 brightness and -5 contrast effect. This helped to
bring out the colours in the shot that could not be picked up as the camera we were using
was not extremely high quality. In some of the other shots I used the Lumetri Colour, Hue
Saturation Curve tool. This tool allows you to raise the amount of multiple different colours
in a clip at the same time by setting points in the colour wheel and then dragging them in or
out depending on if you want to increase or decrease the value.
This tool was essential especially in the final clip as the original clip without this effect being
applied was virtually unusable due to the terrible lighting and colours. After the effect had
been added it looked very good as can be see below.
For our still images that we used Photoshop to edit, resize and position our images for the
Digipack. This is the best software to use as it offers a huge range of powerful tools and
effects to improve and enhance the images we had taken as well as allowing us to combine
and create new images. The main feature which we used for our image editing was the
brightness and contrast feature as well as hue and saturation. This allowed us to make
changes to the colouring and brightness in the images which may have been limited by the
weather and location or the camera quality. By doing so we could make our images look
much higher quality and made them look much better on our Digipack. This allowed us to
portray the ‘warmth’ of the song throughout the whole project as we could use these
effects to bring out the yellow and oranges in the images. `

5. At the start of the video we made a montage section made of stock footage of multiple
natural disasters, terrorist attacks and politically motivated clips which support Bastilles
views. This helped to set the base of the narrative which is the main protagonists hate of the
current state of the world he lives in and his desperate search to find the girl he loves. To
create this intro section I had to use YouTube to source the footage and then use an online
MP4 downloader to get the clips. After that I then used Adobe After Effects to compose
these clips as what I wanted to do with them was too complex to be easily done in
Premiere. I wanted to accurately sync this part of the video with the very noticeable beat of
the music and by using after effects I could easily match these on the exact frame. I also
need to use After Effects over Premier Pro as I required additional effects which are not
available in Premiere. I wanted to show that this was being watched on a TV by the
Protagonist so I decided to create an old-fashioned TV style (much
like what is featured at the start of the Fake It video). To do this I
used the Horizontal Venetian Blinds effect. This created narrow
horizontal lines above the footage which gave it the effect of an
old CRT TV set. I also lowered the brightness of the clips and
increased certain colours in some clips to help build the tension
and mise-en-scene of the section. This made the clips that
were dark more mysterious and dangerous while exaggerating
and drawing attention to the big orange explosions in the
middle east. This all helped to build the back story to the
narrative and pushed Bastilles political agenda. I also cropped
the WWCOMMS News banner real and placed that on top of
the footage. This gave the video a news theme which is another perspective we were trying
to portray in this video. The news and media are so easily manipulated and taken out of
context in current society and we believed that there was a message about this in the song.
Therefore, by overlaying the banner we have ‘manipulated the media’ as we have taken the
footage out of context by making it into a montage while still being a news broadcast.

6. Evaluation
In the evaluation stage of the coursework I had to use a lot of the same technology from the
research stage. To answer the question about audience feedback we created an interview
styled video to receive qualitative feedback from viewers. This allowed us to better answer
the question in a more interesting format. To do this we had to use a Cannon 600D DSLR
camera to record the video, an 8GB SD card, tripod, lighting and a studio background as well
as a microphone to better pick up the audio of the interviewees. Once this had been
recorded we imported the footage onto a computer where we could use Adobe Premiere
Pro to edit the footage down to a short video. I also added an intro title as well as text for
each individual question which just helped to make the video easier to understand as there
were clear visual markers between each question and answer. Once it had been edited and
exported in a H264. Video file at 1080P it was uploaded to Google Drive as this allowed the
large file to shared easily over the internet so the member of the group that had control of
the YouTube channel could upload it. After that I linked it into a post on my blog where I
analysed in on the site. By typing straight into the blog post it was much easier and the post
looked much more professional as the video could be present in the post in an embedded
format and then have the text just below it. If I had typed this up into a word file I would
have had to upload that to SlideShare and embed that into the post separately. This would
have looked unprofessional and messy so by doing it this way I believe it was much better.
For this current question, I obviously used Microsoft Office Word. I thought this was
appropriate as this was long question requiring lots of text and explanation with a few
accompanying pictures. This would not have been a good question to answer in PowerPoint
as due to the page formatting and layout it would not have been easy to write such a large
amount of words as it would have taken many slides which would have made uploading to
my blog awkward.